Grand Junction Diaries

I've had a good week this week. I had an adventure putting in one of those Presta Valve Tubes dad sent me. There was a little tiny piece that I didn't see, but all in all I got them in correctly.

We also had a run in with a pretty angry person while tracting. My companion wanted to try this house with a big fat "no soliciting" sign on it, and I knew pretty much off the bat how this was going to go. Anyway some older lady answered the door and we introduced ourselves as representatives of Jesus Christ, her response was "I know who you are, you are the Mormons. I'm a Pentecostal and I don't believe what you believe and ask that you get off my property." Well she went in to close the door and my foot was in the way, so she thought that I was trying to "put my foot in the door" so she started fuming, followed by her drunk, livid, vein popping husband who came out and started cussing and threatening to call the cops. He was absolutely crazy. After leaving that house I thought, "Wow, those people really do have Christ in their home." It was sad. I thought people were starting to get past that approach to us, but nope, we are still thoroughly persecuted.

Elder Nielsen had a "greenie" moment.  We were teaching some less actives, and he pulls out a scripture and tells these people that we have potential to become Gods and the evidence is in the Bible. Talk about opening up a can of worms. I had to wave that one down by saying that we need to be more concerned about what we should be doing now than the specifics of the next life. Crisis averted.

Also we had a great gospel principles class. There were a lot of new people in there (one of them was a less active who had not been to church in nearly 7 bishops ago).  I wanted to lighten the atmosphere and make a couple funny remarks before the lesson, and I must have been funnier than I thought because they were rolling on the floor. Well we started the lesson and had a wonderful lesson. Even that interesting lady who comes didn't make any outrageous remarks.

I've learned how important it is to be bold on my mission. We contacted this less active guy, a really quiet, mid 20's guy who has no motivation to do anything. So I was pretty bold with him. I told him "you know, the church needs you, and you need the church, and we are waiting to receive you with open arms, but you need to come back. I can't force you, but you need to get off the fence." I was surprised at my boldness, but he responded like "Yeah, I know, but I just have a hard time getting into that routine." It was neat. Hopefully we will get somewhere with him.

Well that's all I have for today, the weather is a lot nicer, but boy is it windy today!

Elder Bringhurst